Cecelia Ahern - The Gift

“Oh, Lou,” she said softly, closing her eyes and savoring the moment. Then suddenly her eyes flicked open, a flash of alarm in them that scared Lou to death about what she was about to say. What did she know? His past behavior came gushing back at him as he panicked. He thought of the other part of him, out there and drunk, possibly destroying this new relationship with his wife, destroying the repairs they had just achieved. He had a vision of the two Lous: one building a brick wall, the other moving behind him with a sledgehammer and knocking down everything as soon as it was built. In reality, that’s what Lou had been doing all along. Building his family up with one hand, while the other shattered everything he’d strived so hard to create.

Ruth quickly let go of him and rushed away into Lucy’s bathroom, where he heard the toilet seat go up and the contents of her insides empty into the bowl. Hating anyone being with her during moments like this, Ruth, ever the multitasker, managed, in mid-vomit, to lift her foot to kick the bathroom door closed.

Lou sighed and collapsed to the floor on the pile of teddies. He picked up the phone that had begun to vibrate yet again.

“What now?” he said in a dull voice, expecting to hear his own drunken voice on the other end. But he didn’t.

BULLSHIT,” THE TURKEY BOY SAID as Raphie paused for breath.

Raphie didn’t say anything; instead, he chose to wait for something more constructive to come out of the boy’s mouth.

“Total bullshit,” he said again.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Raphie said, standing up from the table and gathering the mug, Styrofoam cup, and candy wrappers from the chocolates he’d managed to munch through while he was telling his story. “I’ll leave you alone in peace now to wait for your mother.”

“No, wait!” Turkey Boy spoke up.

Raphie continued walking to the door.

“You can’t just end the story there,” the boy said incredulously. “You can’t leave me hanging.”

“Ah, well, that’s what you get for being unappreciative,” Raphie said with a shrug, “and for throwing turkeys through windows.” He left the interrogation room.

Jessica was in the station’s tiny kitchen, having another coffee. Her eyes were red, and the bags under them had darkened.

“Coffee break already?” He pretended not to notice her withering appearance.

“You’ve been in there for ages.” She blew on her coffee and sipped, not moving the mug from her lips as she spoke, eyes looking away in the distance.

“It’s a long story. Your face okay?”

She gave a single nod, the closest she’d ever get to commenting on the cuts and scrapes across her skin. She changed the subject. “So how far did you get in the story?”

“Lou Suffern’s first pill.”

“What did he say?”

“I do believe ‘Bullshit’ was the expression he used, which was then closely followed by ‘Total bullshit.’”

Jessica smiled lightly. “You got further than I thought. You should show him the tapes of that night. They just came in from the audiovisual conference call. They show a guy who looks exactly like Lou walking out of the boardroom, while at the same time another guy, who also looks exactly like Lou, is sitting at the conference table. Still no sight or word from Gabe though.”

“It could be Gabe in the conference call video.” Raphie thought hard. “He and Lou look very alike.”

“That would be much easier to believe but…”

“You don’t believe it?”

“You don’t believe the cloning version?”

“I’m telling it, aren’t I?”

Jessica lowered the mug slowly from her lips, and those intense, secretive eyes stared deep into his. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

Raphie ignored her and instead poured himself another coffee, adding two sugars, which Jessica — sensing his mood — did not protest. Then he filled a Styrofoam cup with water and shuffled off down the corridor again.

“Where are you going?” she called after him.

“To finish the story,” he grumbled. “And yes, that still doesn’t answer your question.”

WAKEY WAKEY,” A SINGSONG VOICE penetrated Lou’s drunken dreams, where everything was being rerun a hundred times over: mopping Lucy’s brow; plugging Bud’s pacifier back into his mouth; holding Lucy’s hair back as she threw up; hugging Ruth close, her body relaxing against his; then back to Lucy’s heated brow again; Bud spitting out his pacifier; Ruth’s smile when he’d told her he loved her.

He smelled fresh coffee under his nose. Finally opening his eyes, he jumped back at the sight that greeted him, bumping his already throbbing head against a concrete wall.

Lou took a moment to adjust to his surroundings. Some of the visions that greeted his newly opened eyes in the morning were less comforting than others. Rather than the mug of coffee that at that moment was thrust mere inches from his nose, he was more accustomed to the sound of a toilet flush occasionally as his wake-up call. Often the wait for the mystery toilet flusher to exit the bathroom and show her face was a long and unnerving one, and, on a few occasions, Lou had taken it upon himself to disappear from the bed, and the building, before the mystery woman had the opportunity to show her face.

On this particular morning after Lou Suffern had been doubled up for the very first time, he was faced with a new scenario: a man of similar age was offering him a mug of coffee with a satisfied look on his face. This was certainly a new one for the books. Thankfully, the young man was Gabe, and Lou found, with much relief, that they were both fully dressed. With a throbbing head and the foul stench of something rotting in his mouth, he took in his surroundings.

He was on the ground. That he could tell by his proximity to the concrete and the long distance to the open paneled ceiling with its wires dripping down. The floor was hard despite the sleeping bag beneath him. He had a crick in his neck from the position to which his head had been rather unfortunately lodged. Above him, metal shelves towered to the ceiling: hard, gray, cold, and depressing, they stood like the cranes that littered Dublin’s skyline, metal invaders umpiring a developing city. To the left, the new addition of a shadeless lamp was the guilty party behind the unforgiving bright white light that wasn’t so much thrown around the room as it was aimed at Lou’s head, like a pistol in a steady hand. What was glaringly obvious was that he was in Gabe’s room in the basement. Gabe now stood over him. The sight was familiar, a mirror image of only a week ago, when Lou had stopped on the street to offer Gabe a coffee. Only this time the image was as distorted and disturbing as a mirror at a carnival, because when Lou assessed the situation, it was he who was down here, and Gabe who was up there.

“Thanks.” He took the mug from Gabe, wrapping his cold hands around the porcelain. He shivered. “It’s freezing in here.” His first words were a croak, and as he sat up he felt the weight of the world crashing down on his head, another hangover for the second morning running.

“Yeah, someone promised to bring me an electric heater, but I’m still waiting.” Gabe grinned. “Don’t worry, I hear blue lips are in this season.”

“Oh, sorry, I’ll get Alison right on that,” Lou mumbled, and sipped the black coffee. He had taken his initial wakening moment to figure out where he was. His first sip of caffeine alerted him to another problem.

“What the hell am I doing here?” he asked. He sat up properly, attentive now, and studied himself for clues. He was dressed in yesterday’s suit, a crumpled, rumpled mess with some questionable, though mostly self-explanatory, stains on his shirt, tie, and jacket. “What the hell is that smell?”